Just A Girl
by sexiglassesSNOG
Summary: She caught a whiff of his dangerousness and shivered, but still stood her ground. He smelled of smoke and the crisp air outside. " TR&GW...only slight...uall know how much I love tom&ginny fics. probably going to be continued.
1. A Dying Candle

Just A Girl

Chapter One: A Dying Candle

He had ebony hair. Hers was like fire unleashed. 

His smile was like ice. Hers was like _a dying candle._

_Dying._

He was everything she was not. 

In a whirl of past and future and present and _time,_ oh, yes, time, fateful time, he came out of the book like a _serpent_ – slimy and cold and everything dark and evil.

She stared at him with a face white as the paper of the book, now blank. Empty of all her thoughts and feelings. _Empty as her mind and her heart and her soul. _

She caught a whiff of his dangerousness and shivered, but still stood her ground. _He smelled of smoke and the crisp air outside. _

"Tom," she said with a shaky voice, "you smell of smoke." It was a feeble attempt at conversation and yet still voiced how she felt inside. _Fearful._

He laughed but now the laugh was not friendly. _But I haven't heard his laugh before, _she thought and felt the coldness wash through her body, leaving her mind limp and almost incapable of thought. 

He laughed again and took her with him to a room far beneath the school. He kept laughing. He would not stop.

"Tom," her voice came, "Tom! _Tom!" _She was nearly hysterical and yet he would not listen to her. "_Tom, where are you taking me?"_

He did not answer her question but instead said dreamily, "You were only a girl."

"_Tom!"_ Her face was whiter than before and she kicked weakly at him. He did not release his hold on her arms. 

"Only a girl. Just an eleven-year-old girl who thought she had found solace in a friend." He half spit the words out. 

"_What are you going to do with me, Tom? What are you going to do with me?"_

"What am I going to do with you? I wonder………"

_"You're going to kill me, aren't you, Tom," _she accused and almost instantly her eyelids closed like Sleeping Beauty – not in sleep, but in death.

They flicked open once again.

This was not the Tom she knew.

_He laughed at her pain. _

_The candle flame was waning._

_It was almost out. _


	2. Fire Rekindled

Just A Girl

**Chapter Two: Fire Rekindled**

            She was limp now.

            He carried her as easily as he carried his wand in his hand.

            _He could break her just as easily._

Her fire-red curls fell over her shoulders and nearly brushed the floor. He stiffened and lifted her higher. For once in his life he shivered. _It was as if the red-gold locks might burst into flame. _

They reached the dungeon, her hair _still trailing behind her._ He grabbed it up and pushed it into the hood of her cloak, almost violently but not quite. _He didn't know yet if he could really hurt her._

He collapsed there on the floor and laid her gently down. They remained there for what seemed hours while time whirled around them incessantly, the unconscious, pale girl and the barely alive _yet nearly even paler _boy who was aged beyond his years. 

            _It was the only time he had ever cried._ There was no reason for him to do it now. 

            He looked at the corpselike body of the eleven-year-old girl who had once had life.

            _Life he had never had._

_            **Never**._

He broke the spell and threw _that damned diary_ at the wall. It slammed into it with such force that he saw the girl shake, even in her sleep. Although it was not really _sleep_. 

            It was _death._

Anger replaced sorrow and he clenched his fists, arms shaking, and waited.

            _Waited for the boy to come. _Because he knew that the he would, eventually.

            **_He waited. _**


	3. Even Now

Just A Girl

**Chapter Three: Even Now**

The boy shouted but stayed calm, and he and his friend went to save the girl.

_Tom had known they would. _

_Tom was laughing even now._

**_Ginny was dying even now._**

****

****

They left their empty glasses that once held chilled pumpkin juice there on the long wooden table in the Hall, empty like the girl's body. 

_Like Tom's mind, once upon a time._

They came in a rush of clammy air that followed their descent into the Chamber.

The snake heard them come. Although it was not actually _alive_.

So did Tom.

Ginny did not. Ginny was barely alive. _Ginny was dying, even now._

****

**_Tom was laughing, even now._**

****

****

In a flash of black hair and a hiss of words the boy entered to find the girl lying on the floor. He saw her pale face and her red hair, spread about the floor like a bower. Like a boat that would bear her down a tranquil river towards her death. 

"No," he whispered. " – no, Ginny, wake up…_please_ wake up…"

She did not wake.

In a last attempt at waking her he bent over her and no one saw, but he kissed her ashen lips. Even though he was twelve, and she was eleven, and neither of them really knew what love was. _Even though she was dying. Even now._

He jerked upright as he felt someone else enter, someone with a presence that _smelled of smoke and death._

Someone who smelled of smoke and death should not be allowed near Ginny.

He did not know that the someone had been nearer Ginny than anyone would have allowed, had they known. _Near enough to choke the life out of her small still body. _

He heard the someone speak.

_"She won't wake."_

He turned mutely to face him and saw in shock that it was the boy who he had written to, _once upon a time. _

He knew that he was not on his side.

He had never killed anyone before.

He might have to now.


	4. Death

Just A Girl

**Chapter Four: Death**

_Death looked the boy in the eyes, not for the first time._

_Death had not come for him._

_Death had come for Ginny._

**He would not let it get to her.**

_It was blurry from there. A slime-green serpent with sharp teeth and fangs and huge yellow eyes, that rose and fell and rose again to find him. He ran like he had never run before and Tom laughed and instructed the basilisk in a language only the three of them could understand. _

If Ginny had been awake to watch and scream and hide among the creeping shadows on the cold slabs of stone she would not have understood either the language or _what he was doing._

_He would lead the snake to himself in her place._

If Ginny had been conscious she would have shrieked and run to him and offered herself in his place. Ginny was like that. He wondered why Tom had not thought of that.

_Tom would have enjoyed watching that. The terror in the boy and the girl's eyes. The moment they looked their fates in the eye._

It was enough for Harry and he went forward like some hero from an old tale to slay the evil snake.

Except, in the stories, the hero _always came out alive._

_Not so this time._

Because when the snake lay gasping on the floor nearly dead, its fang went into the boy's arm and his breathing became ragged as his life's blood pooled on the stone-cold floor. Like a dream everything slowed and he tried to breathe while the poison went into his skin and he glanced over at Ginny.

_So innocent. So young._

_So deathly her mistake._

He lay back against the floor as if in defeat. And Tom still stood there, laughing as he watched the boy dying. 

_The phoenix rose as if in a dream._

Tom continued to laugh.

_It drifted towards the boy. The diamond tears poured from its half-closed eyes and healed the boy._

Tom noticed nothing. It was all so hysterically laughable to his sadistic mind of cold and steel and death.

_Soon to be his own._

_The boy reached out and stabbed the book savagely with the fang that lay on the ground beside him – stabbed it again and again and again tirelessly, not heeding Tom's shrieks of pain and of **horror.**_

****

****

**_And Ginny woke._**


End file.
